On February 1, Kylie Jenner and Travis Scott celebrated their daughter Stormi’s second birthday with another Stormi World-themed birthday party. And let’s just say her second birthday party was even more over-the-top than her first.
Just like last year, the party was a direct homage to her dad’s AstroWorld album, featuring a custom-made theme park, Stormi’s very own store, and a star-studded guest-list that included all the Kardashians and Jenners, Hailey Bieber, Rosalía, Chrissy Teigen, John Legend, and their daughter Luna.
Ahead of the birthday party, the Kylie Cosmetics mogul shared a photo to her Instagram Stories of all her daughter’s birthday presents. “I can’t wait for my baby to wake up in the AM,” she captioned the image.
But little did everyone know Jenner was about to out-do herself.
Guests arrived at the party to find a massive inflatable version of Stormi’s head complete with a map to navigate their way through the maze that included Trolls and Frozen-themed rooms. There were also Trolls tree characters as well as an ice sculpture of Olaf the snowman and a meet-and-greet with Elsa.
The proud mom captured Stormi’s adorable reaction to her party.
Those working at the party wore aprons that read “Stormi Word 2 is Better Than 1.”
There was also a Dumbo ride and a huge inflatable slide.
And a sweet table that looked super delicious…
…let’s not even discuss Stormi’s four-tier birthday cake.
Jenner and Scott, who split in October 2019, also proved they’re still on good terms as they came together to sing “Happy Birthday” to their little one.
There was even a life-size a claw machine (!!) filled with tiny Stormi-head pillows.
And let’s not forget the people walking around in giant Stormi heads.
Before the big bash, Jenner shared a touching tribute for Stormi on Instagram, writing, “And just like that she’s two ⚡️⚡️ happy birthday to my Stormi. February 1st 4:43pm the moment my life changed forever. We were meant for each other stormiloo ?”
As a freelance writer, I’m one of the growing number of women who spends her day hunched in a near-constant state of anxiety over her desk. My life centers around deadlines, often breathlessly tight ones, and the constant hustle to keep myself afloat is taxing. It started to wear on me.
Wired and with an increasingly painful tension in my neck and shoulders, I recently found myself unable to sleep, a problem that triggered a snowball effect of other health issues: decreased attention span and difficulty concentrating, a weakened immune system, increased irritability.
Unsurprisingly, my doctor promptly diagnosed me with chronic stress. But I was surprised by my prescription: spend more time outside.
The Park Ranger Will See You Now
Park prescription programs—the official name for the Rx I was given to help treat my debilitating stress—may sound like the latest woo-woo wellness trend but they’re actually gaining steam among mainstream medical providers.
Here’s how it works: in lieu of a more traditional method of treating stress and anxiety, like meditation or therapy, a doctor might give you a referral to a local green space. “In the ideal clinical setting, doctors talk with patients about how far to walk, help them find a space to walk”—sometimes using a specific local trails program—“and set small goals, like going outside three times per week for a half hour per session,” says Kristin Anderson, M.D., a family physician in Missoula, Montana, and a member of the state’s Trails Rx program. That prescription goes right into your electronic medical record so your doctor can track your progress—just as you’d book a follow up appointment after being prescribed a new medication, your doctor would check in on how things are going, how you’re feeling, and whether your prescription needed any adjustment. “It’s really similar to how you prescribe medicine,” Anderson says. At follow-up appointments, doctors might measure things like BMI, blood pressure, or mental health outcomes in order to quantify results.
It’s important to note that nature prescriptions don’t mean medications are becoming irrelevant. “Medications and other therapies have very important roles in disease management,” Anderson says. Many conditions from depression to diabetes can’t be cured with self-care alone—if you need meds, you should take them. Prescribing time in nature is often about working in tandem with traditional drugs, Anderson says. “Nature prescriptions highlight the cross between the importance of medical management and behavior change. When that synergy occurs, patients are more likely to see lasting benefits and meaningful results.”
The science behind a park prescription is legit. Hundreds of studies link time outside to better health outcomes: lower blood pressure and heart rate, better immune system function, lower stress. Two hours spent outside a week is all you need to reap the benefits, according to a 2019 study from Scientific Reports. Doctors are so convinced by the healing power of Mother Nature that park prescriptions are gaining traction as recognized medical treatments for a range of conditions: heart disease, hypertension, high cholesterol, diabetes, chronic stress, depression, anxiety, insomnia, and even PTSD.
While a growing body of research (and number of#forestbathing posts on Instagram) suggests simply going for a walk in the park can do your brain and body good, many nature Rx programs are more structured. “There’s a vast array of different types of programming across the country, but they all have one thing in common: a referral from the health care side, and a partner on the public lands system side that can connect with the patient and provide the actual prescription,” says Diane Medley, director of the Institute at the Golden Gate. One program in California, Stay Healthy in Nature Everyday (SHINE) busses groups of patients, doctors and naturalists to local parks each month for a dose of nature and social connection. Other programs include guided walks with a park ranger, trailhead displays, or a tie-in to the national Walk with a Doc program where people can ask questions and learn about health from a local physician.
Wong: When he called and proposed that we write a rom-com together, I thought—because at the time no one had known me at all for acting—that he meant he wanted me to write something with him for him to star in with somebody else. Which is perfectly normal. That seems like a rude thing, but people ask that kind of shit all the time. I thought he wanted to be in something with Emma Stone or something. And I would’ve done it! And then he clarified and was like, “I think it should be a romantic comedy for you and I to star in together.” We just got to it.
This story is so distinctly Asian American. I was sitting in a screening room next to another Asian reporter, and as soon as we saw the Spam on the plate in the first scene, we both gasped. I grew up not seeing myself on screen at all in pop culture, so it’s still surreal seeing two Asian people fall in love.
Wong: I wonder what it’s like for non-Asian people to see that. I keep hearing people from people who are Asian American who are so excited to see it, and I wonder what it’s like for [non-Asians].
Park: It’s like growing up watching When Harry Met Sally. I put myself in their shoes.
Wong: But like, when would you ever see another Asian American couple hook up?
Park: Never. That’s a good question. I wonder if it has any effect on non-Asians.
Wong: The effect is that there’s been this whole online discussion about Randall being a snack. And then there are debates on whether he’s a snack or a meal. So there’s a revelation amongst non-Asian people about something that I’ve known for a very long time: Asian-American men are super sexy. And Daniel [Dae Kim] and Randall are like 50.
Park: I’m 45!
Ali Wong and Randall Park at an afterparty for the Always Be My Maybe premiere.
Emma McIntyre/Getty Images for Netflix
When you were writing the script, did you add little Easter eggs for Asian Americans, or was the whole movie just very Asian because of you two writing it and Nahnatchka Khan directing it?
Park: We didn’t come in thinking of that. For us it was really about making a good movie—a good rom-com that came from a real place. I think that’s where those elements made their way in because they came from our experiences, like Ali growing up in the Bay Area. A lot of those details kind of came in as we were making the film and filling up the world. The little details people appreciate weren’t written in the script.
Wong: To me, Marcus’ character is very much a type of guy that I grew up with. A very Asian American dude who grew up in the Bay and lives at home well into his 30s because of gentrification and rent is so expensive in San Francisco. They have this artistic passion and they’re not that ambitious because they’re third generation. Their parents don’t have that crazy immigrant mentality. That’s something I have never seen on camera before, but that’s something I very much grew up with. These guys were so sexy and confident, but they’re good, you know? They’re satisfied and not watching for anything more. And his dad is his friend.
Yeah, you usually just see tiger moms and overbearing immigrant parents in pop culture…
Wong: Right, and you haven’t seen that kind of Asian dad before. My dad was born in the United States. He didn’t have any accent, he was very progressive, and he journaled. He’s really into self-reflection. I know a lot of dads like that, and I have always felt like it’s a shame that they weren’t on camera. This is not the Asian American rom-com. This is an Asian American rom com. That’s an Asian American dad. That’s an Asian American guy I haven’t seen before. And that’s very exciting to me.
In that opening scene, Marcus doesn’t want to bring leftover kimchi stew to school. He says no one wants to sit next to a thermos kid, which is the stinky lunchbox problem that I imagine a lot of Asian Americans feel going to school with something that’s not just PB&J. What made that important?
Kylie Jenner celebrated her daughter Stormi Webster’s first birthday over the weekend—and in true Kardashian style, she threw her 1-year-old the most lavish bash ever. As in, she basically built Stormi a theme park.
If you thought Kim Kardashian’s Alice in Wonderland-theme party for baby Chicago West was extravagant, this “Stormi World” celebration might take the (birthday) cake. After delaying the party for a week due to rainy weather conditions, Jenner and her boyfriend, Travis Scott, pulled out all the stops by designing an actual theme park for little Stormi’s first birthday party.
Guests entered Stormi World through an inflatable version of Stormi’s face—suspiciously similar to her dad’s Astroworld album cover—to find rides, hot air balloons, a butterfly rainbow forest, a wall of giant teddy bears, and a gift shop that sold exclusive Stormi World merch.
Kylie gave fans a tour by sharing a whole bunch of videos on her Instagram Stories—and it’s really something.
Instagram Stories/@kyliejenner
Instagram Stories/@kyliejenner
Instagram Stories/@kyliejenner
There was even a live performance from Baby Shark:
Instagram Stories/@kyliejenner
DJ Khaled was there, and he gifted baby Stormi with her first-ever Chanel bag:
Instagram Stories/@kyliejenner
There was also Stormi-themed food, including cookies with her face on them, Louis Vuitton-boxed fries, mini pizzas, and a fairy cake.
Instagram Stories/@kyliejenner
Instagram Stories/@kyliejenner
Instagram Stories/@kyliejenner
Instagram Stories/@kyliejenner
Grandma Kris and aunties Khloé and Kourtney were also in attendance, as well as Stormi’s cousins, Mason, Penelope, Reign, True, and Rob’s daughter Dream. Kim wasn’t though, explaining on Twitter that she couldn’t make it due to scheduling conflict.
Caitlyn Jenner was also there, sharing this photo to her Instagram account alongside the caption: “Beyond proud of my amazing daughter for all of her accomplishments, but especially proud of what an amazing mom she is to her little girl! And what a great birthday party!! Happy first birthday Stormi!”
“What gets remembered is determined by who is in the room doing the remembering,” Betty Reid Soskin likes to say. So she’s made it her singular purpose to always be in the room.
Today that room is the auditorium at the Rosie the Riveter/WWII Home Front National Historical Park in Richmond, California, where—at 97—she’s the oldest person now serving as a permanent National Park Service ranger. She packs the theater three times a week with talks about the Rosies and the typically white narrative about the women who served the war effort, but interweaves her experience as a young black woman in segregated America.
There are a few things you should know about my friend Betty. Barely five feet three inches tall, she is sylphlike and strong. When she walks, she leans slightly forward, as if facing a headwind, and strides with speed and purpose. Betty never planned to be a ranger. She got the job at the young age of 85, after working as a field representative for her California assemblywoman, Dion Aroner. Aroner asked her to sit in on planning meetings for what would become the park, and Betty quickly saw that, if she didn’t speak up, the park would portray a whitewashed version of history. “There was no conspiracy to leave my history out,” she says. “There was simply no one in that room with any reason to know it.” So she sparked additions to the formal narratives: the 120,000 people of Japanese descent placed in internment camps by the government; the 320 sailors and workers, 202 of them black men, who died in the explosions at nearby Port Chicago. “So many stories,” Betty muses, “all but forgotten.”
Working at an all-black union hall during World War II and then briefly in an all-white branch of the Air Force (they didn’t realize she was black when they hired her), Betty saw stories like these firsthand, becoming, as she puts it, “a primary source” from the time. Tom Leatherman, the park’s superintendent, says Betty motivated organizers to bring more people to the table: “Because of Betty, we made sure we had African American scholars review our films and exhibits, but we also made sure we were looking out for other, often forgotten stories—Japanese American, Latino American, American Indian, and LGBTQ narratives—that were equally important.”
PHOTO: SHANIQWA JARVIS
“History has been written by people who got it wrong. But the people who are always trying to get it right have prevailed,” says Reid Soskin, photographed at Rosie the Riveter Park. “If that were not true, I would still be a slave like my great-grandmother.”
This year Betty also began sharing her own story. In February she published a memoir, Sign My Name to Freedom, which traces her roots back to her great-grandmother Leontine Breaux Allen, who was born into slavery in Louisiana in 1846 and lived until she was 102. Her families’ lives, Betty says, “stretch from Dred Scott to Black Lives Matter.” Her long view of history—brutally honest and fiercely optimistic—is what draws people to her speeches, both at the park and at her numerous engagements. But what keeps listeners enthralled is hearing a woman who speaks extemporaneously and inclusively about America in its fullness. She also offers a blueprint on how not to despair about our times. “Democracy has been experiencing these periods of chaos since 1776. They come and go,” she says. “And it’s in those periods that democracy is redefined.” When everything seems to be crumbling, we can remold and reset, she believes: “History has been written by people who got it wrong, but the people who are always trying to get it right have prevailed. If that were not true, I would still be a slave like my great-grandmother.”
“In my younger years, I aspired to changing the world. Then reality kicked in, and I settled for 500 square feet.”
For her service Betty has been awarded the Silver Service Medallion by the National WWII Museum, and President Barack Obama presented her with a coin with the presidential seal. There are two documentaries in the works about her life: a half-hour film for the Rosie the Riveter Trust and a long-form documentary that prominently features Betty’s music (her powerful and often painful lyrics about race in America, sung with her delicate voice, have brought comparisons to Nina Simone) alongside her life of activism. She worked for civil rights during Freedom Summer, was active against the Vietnam War, helped with faith-based racial healing work in the Unitarian Universalist church, and became a delegate to the 1972 Democratic National Convention in support of George McGovern. “In my younger years, I aspired to changing the world,” she says. “Then reality kicked in, and I settled for 500 square feet.” After her marriage to Mel Reid ended, she wed University of California, Berkeley, research psychologist William Soskin and used her connections as a faculty wife to gain more civic power, advocating for racial and economic equity for all Berkeley residents while still running the family store, Reid’s Records.
Power. That is what Betty’s life has always been about. The power of self-determination, of imagination, of civic engagement—and of art, beauty, and love. It was a power that ripened within her with every decade of her life, including the times she felt that she was broken, like early on, when she was the mother of two young children and the family received death threats for being the only black family in the neighborhood. Or more recently, in 2016, when a man broke into her home and stole her presidential coin. (When she caught him in the act, he punched her. So she reached up his “trousers,” as she calls them, and squeezed the hell out of his crown jewels. He fled, and in a few weeks, Betty healed and went back to work to great fanfare, and President Obama sent her a replacement.) “Everything I’ve ever done, everything I’ve ever learned,” she says, “I’m using all of that stuff right now. And all the women that reside in me are now operative.”
We all wish we could be that fully present in our lives, and it’s something you soak up when you’re around Betty. She now has a clear sense of how her life touched others—a 2015 National Park Service Facebook post shows her leading a tour, with her words above it: “[I] wear my uniform at all times; because when I’m on the streets or on an escalator or elevator, I am making every little girl of color aware of a career choice she may not have known she had.”
She also recognizes that her time is limited. “I know I’m in my final days,” says Betty. “I am so aware that if I don’t get it right this time, I can’t ever have time to do it again.” In many people’s mouths this would be a lament. In Betty’s it is a paean to the power of the present. “Everything in my life has to be truthful and meaningful,” she says, “because I don’t have time for foolishness.” After all, she says, “we do not know who is powerful in the moment.” Only history can tell us that.
Journalist Farai Chideya is a former NPR news host, author of The Episodic Career, and the journalism program officer at the Ford Foundation.
HAIR AND MAKEUP: WHITTANY ROBINSON AT AUBRI BALK INC.; ROSIE THE RIVETER MEMORIAL DESIGNED BY THE OFFICE OF CHERYL BARTON, LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTS AND SUSAN SCHWARTZENBERG, VISUAL ARTIST; PRODUCTION: INDIGITAL/CARMEL BERGHOLZ
